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Friday, September 30, 2011

A kitchen at last!

There is nothing quite so motivating as the announcement of visitors coming. Mr. DJ’s sister, her husband, their youngest daughter and her husband visited us from Nebraska this past weekend. Oh, we were motivated! Over four weekends we installed cabinets, countertops, light fixtures and laminate flooring. This is one of the very few “before” pictures I took. Note the blue sink base. Every cabinet, door, window frame and piece of trim in the house was that color.

Ta da!! The new kitchen!! Not big, but it works.

The cabinets are stock hickory from Lowes. (If you’re going to buy stock cabinets, I’d suggest inspecting them in the store without the packaging. We had two damaged ones and one that was very out of square.) There are still things to finish such as the trim and some flooring, but it’s mostly done and fully functional.

We still have a tendency to head into the living room to get something from the fridge or use the stove since that’s where they were for three years. The prep work for this project was pretty extensive as we moved walls, added new electrical circuits and plumbing lines. I learned to finish drywall and am fairly certain I would starve if I had to earn a living at it.

What? You don’t take pictures of your garbage can? This is one of my favorite features. The trash is out of the way as long as you don’t mind giving up a little cabinet space. And I emptied the garbage before I took the picture. Just for you.

I love the new ceiling fixture. We didn’t want to move the old ceiling box, so being able to adjust the track to center over the island was a great solution.

The photo below shows the mud room we added. The new laundry room is to the right and the back deck is to the left. We vented the dryer through the mud room and needed a way to cover it. The solution, after much brainstorming, was to install wall cabinets over a framework and have a skinny (13”) piece of countertop made to fit. It’s a little out of the ordinary, but I love it! It’s great extra storage. See the pretty blue door? More painting to do.

I’m working on a sketch of the before and after footprints of the entire project and will share that when it’s finished. We think the changes we’ve made have been worth the effort. All that is left to do is replace the carpeting in the rest of the house, a little more drywall and painting and some landscape work.

We had a wonderful time with our guests! The itinerary included The Grand Ole’ Opry, Jack Daniels, The Alabama Space and Rocket Center and The Hermitage. The highlight may have been watching Nebraska football Saturday night with crazy exuberant Husker fans! It was extremely…er… colorful. And there may or may not have been abundant amounts of food and alcohol consumed over the 4 days they were here, but I’m not saying for sure.

I’ve sufficiently recovered enough from all the work and fun to enter this quilt in the Quilting Gallery’s weekly contest. The feature this week is Flying Geese quilts. If you are bored to tears and desperately need something to do for the next 3 minutes, you could go vote for me and two others. I do have two votes and I didn’t vote for myself so that’s something, right?

You definitely get a whoop whoop for that great looking kitchen!!! We can't quilt all the time, you know - occasionally we have to break out and create in other ways..... And I voted for your quilt, which you already know I love!!